


You are the fire

by MikeSierra



Category: Team Fortress 2
Genre: A little gore here and there, Historical AU, M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-12-26
Updated: 2020-01-06
Packaged: 2021-02-26 03:16:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 4,467
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21976471
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MikeSierra/pseuds/MikeSierra
Summary: Winter war 1940. The lives of two lonely men cross.
Relationships: Sniper/Spy (Team Fortress 2)
Comments: 2
Kudos: 11





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> An historical AU for what has easily become my favorite duo. Hints of torture, deaths of minor characters.

Wristwatch's ticking and it soon reaches 2300 hour. Damp mist blurred the dial of his clock. The sniper, while still with the finger on the trigger, slowly turned his wrist to clean the clock just enough to check the time.  
2300\. His change was probably already setting up his rifle over the hill, in the clear of snow. Of course, he couldn't see him. He couldn't see but white, on either sides. Fresh snow covered like an heavy blanket the shore of the Finnish bay, the inlet of what, during the summer months became estuary of a river but for the moment, was just a thick layer of ice. Nothing was to be seen, neither on the side of the Soviet Union border, nor in the other direction, where a thick fog would melt the dark forest of the taiga into the pale sky.  
With a sigh the sniper waited for the minute hand to resume its lonely road for another hour and, in complete silence, with habitual movements, he returned to his small wooden hut at the feet of the forest.  
Closing the heavy door, the sniper felt up the walls to reach for the lightswitch, turning on a small lightbulb hanging from the ceiling. Kneeling down on the fireplace, he kindled the fire and right then, electricity was turned off. The young man stood up, staggered to the tiny kitchen stove and with what was left, arranged a small dinner.  
He had let the heat from the stove warm his hands above it, still gloved in leather: as he perceived the hot sensation and the usual sensibility in his fingertips, he pulled off the gloves. Then, his hands now free, he undressed from the furhat and unrolled the long white scarf from around his head and neck. The skin underneath, not used to the warmness of the indoor, reddened quickly: a shift in sensation he was used to, in this new job. He leaned with a shoulder on the corner of the stove, his whole face and neck held above the pan where the dry fish and cheese were cooking: a familiar smell awakening the hunger he learned to disregard. His blonde hair, damp with sweat, stuck to his forehead and his ears. The skin of his face, too worn by the ice-cold weather and by the activity that led him to spend half his time in the open fields, mostly covered in snow.  
In the previous year, he had been assigned to another marksman task, but in the heart of his town: he lived with his wife and their son, in the same house as his parents, and took the job exclusively for the money it provided to his household - for a day's pay higher than most, marksmanship was no different than any other job.  
Except he was damn good at it. The town had been invaded by the Russians, his family was able to flee, but his service was needed even after, even more desperately: and so he found himself exiled on the new front, in what would look like no man's land to an unskilled eye. And there he was.  
The radio kept little company, but he found it to be useful after the news of the war with the Russians started to be broadcasted by all major stations. He placed the radio on a pile of books: over all, stood out the Finnish national epic poem, the Kalevala. Unlike modern literature - too complicated for his taste - he found the simple tales of heroes relaxing. But even that, at times, came heavy; as to empathise his absolute loneliness, distant voices from the radio, or words telling lives of others, burdened him like heavy carriages. The only happy memories being the pictures with his wife, his baby boy back home, jealously hidden - treasured - inside an old metal cigarette box.  
Seems understandable then, how in most nights the sniper preferred to fall asleep simply listening to the hushed sounds of nature, the same sounds that during the shift tensed his every nerve and, now that his back was covered by his comrade, brought him peace.  
Sitting in his simple bedding, he awaited sleep watching from the small window the shine of the cold moonlight reflect on the bay.  
Nothing but peace. From a distance, the light of the moon ran as a track in the snow, shimmering in the pitch black sea.  
Something glistened on the dark waters that embraced the bay. The sniper thought of some fish emerging on the surface, but that would have hardly been the case considering the nearly-freezing temperatures of the sea water. Truth be told, even since he had been assigned to the bay area, he had never fished; all the food and cigarettes he ever needed were brought to him by a comrade, regularly once a week. His senses - always a precious aid in his work - jerked awake and as an instinctive reflex, he reached in a few steps the kitchen counter and took up his shotgun from behind a stack of canned fish.  
Less accurate, quicker.  
Someone was getting closer to his hut.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A little of Spy's backstory.  
> (Angst: how could I resist?)

《A man of honor. Medalled both in Estonia and Germany. One of our best informers, for sure. I read you have been crucial to the positive outcome of our mission in Berlin, helping the Union to deliver to justice its traitors. Your dossier was provided to me for this exact reason, because the Union can count on you.》

The colonel searched lazily the eyes of his interlocutor. Much younger, only a few silver straws framed the corner of his face, ice blue eyes gave a curt answer, a formal nod as if asked to recognise himself in the superior's description.  
Just a few years back, he had been recruited in an espionage mission in the very heart of the Reich's metallurgic trade. To gain reliability he had to start a new family from nothing: a façade management position in one of the major steel industries, Berlin branch, arranged by a corrupt executive working for the Union. With such a place in the city's social environment, and such a figure that would have inspired refinement by it alone, it had been easy to find a fiancèe, and soon later - with the approval of her family of factory-owners - what would have become his wife.  
Glancing idly at the dossier, the spy remembered her. A fine lady in her twenties, pure as some wild forest fern, blonde as summer corn. She looked like a child next to him, even if they differed by little more than five years of age. What started as nothing more than a business transaction, with the implicit hope by her family that she would be well-treated by that distinguished orphan of war-made-businessman, developed with the passing of time into a nice friendship between the two spouses, admittedly one of the few good relationships he had ever had with anyone. He helped her financially, he was there as she slowly opened about the pressure she was put under by her parents to have children; her interest for literature. They travelled to France and Italy: he could tell she was falling in love with her husband as he listened her patiently, in silence. He wasn't the most handsome man in Berlin, but he had such deep blue eyes that could stare deep into one's soul and still, like an one-way door, not let anyone near his own thoughts. He had a bearing that revealed his past military education, sometimes bothering him as he thought it would have been easier to spot him while looking for military spies in that environment. Nonetheless, his manners suited well with opera plays and gala dinners. She soon started loving her new life style and he, he was slowly approaching the èlites of the Nazi Party through several, increasingly exclusive clubs. He had played once again the game of life, as excellently as he had done before. What's more, he started to genuinely enjoy her company, the abundance of that new life.  
They made love, and he couldn't say he didn't like it. But he didn't love her. He couldn't, as she couldn't know that the man she was in love with and married to, wasn't the German youth she believed but instead, a Russian bastard child, towering on a mountain of lies.  
There were some days where, coming back from some covert punitive expedition on some political enemies, he took refreshment in listening to her, lullying them both in the false belief that he could, after all, consider that a small family. He would find himself awake at night, thinking about the possibility that his work would keep up with him and more importantly, find Her.

《I sense that you won't have anything to object to this mission. Right?》  
Dark brows furrowed at the other end of the desk in that same office, of that same building in central Stalingrad where he had been assigned all previous tasks, where all his other lives started. Where the very same colonel informed him of the death of his wife, soon after he left Berlin at the end of the operation, her killed under suspicious circumstances.  
He gave another nod, opening the folder in front of him.

《Where?》  
《Finland, countryside. Town of Kyronniemi.》


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> WARNING: Graphic depictions of mild body horror (involving mostly blood, flesh, wounds) throughout the chapter.
> 
> If you want to skip the most gruesome part, jump to 《Who are you?》, third paragraph.  
> Don't worry, you don't miss much.
> 
> __________________

Right there, in the Finnish countryside, town of Kyronniemi, the spy woke up with an hell of an headache. As if someone had been punching his way into his skull, or a demon just seemed to take the sides of his head between his claws and try to smash it. The same demon that he, as a child, had been warned from by the nuns in his orphanage in the case he would have ever lied. Curiously enough, he had managed to lie for a living, and not once he had met the said demon. Until that moment, at least.

He jerked awake, his shoulders detaching from the support he was laying on, finding himself strapped to a chair.  
His eyes ran on his lap, finding it bound with thick hunting ropes, and stopped looking down further, once he reached his thighs: the thick fabric of his trousers had become a sickening blob of dark clot blood and flesh, mixed with the muscle of what were his thighs. On one of them, the bare bone showed, covered in gunfire powder, the flesh around it burned black. As soon as he tried to focus on the larger hole in the center of one thigh, the smell of his own flesh was so sickening that he had to divert his eyes. Good thing he hadn't eaten anything in a while, or he'd most probably throw up.  
Even if it wasn't the first time he had seen his own body like that, the sight left him too nauseous to watch, and so he lifted his gaze in front of him. His head already spinning, the surprise of someone so close startled him, making him flinch.

A tall man, blonde, dressed not differently than a farmer or a soldier, for all he could have known. No uniform, but a large white wool jacket and gloves, an heavy beanie hat. His cheeks were bony and covered in reddish frostbite. Could have been either a farmer or a soldier, until the moment the spy realized the man in front of him returned his gaze, stopping from polishing a sniper rifle in his lap.

Sniper felt somehow relieved, the moment the other regained consciousness. If the other had never awoke, all his efforts to take the body inside his hut would have been useless - and a little morbid, given the way he managed to place and tie him up in his chair.

《Who are you?》 the sniper tried, in Finnish. There wouldn't have been any reason not to ask. If not his identity, his nationality was clear enough by the position he was holding in the bay.  
Besides, there were nothing from the spy that signalled he even understood what the other was saying. His clear eyes gazed hungrily at the sniper, waiting to catch some other information from him. In such a powerless position, the least he could do was to protect his mission as long as he could. Until the moment, and during the torture that would have likely followed.  
The sniper had other intentions, though. He has never been one for questioning, not even in combat, where the physical interaction was inevitable. His whole idea of war revolved around, respectively: the most skilled men, the best equipment, the furthest stationing. His interactions had always been brief: he usually obtained all they had to tell him, and he didn't see any reason why to not let them live.  
With this unplanned hostage, he planned to do no different. Even if, living in such a faraway corner of the world, no one would have noticed or brought into question the death of the other man. It all depended on how well the foreigner - because he had to be a foreigner, right? - behaved. As for the moment, the spy didn't leave any hint as to deduce where he came from nor what he was sent to do.  
A doubt suddenly arose at the back of the sniper's head: was he even a...man? Little of his skin was visible, and his slim figure could have been as well that of a tall woman. He finally decided to move, step closer to the figure that sat, tied between his bed and the small dinner table.  
After a few seconds of hesitation he left his rifle on the chair and picked up instead, from the kitchen counter, a pair of scissors.

The spy tracked all his movements with ostensible calm.  
The sniper didn't assault him, nor did he leave him bleeding out in the snow. With the freezing temperatures of outside and the constant possibility to be tortured during his mission, he sometimes found himself hoping for such a quick death as the one in the snow. Especially in that moment, since the marksman clutched that pair of scissors, coming at him.

Not that he could have done anything: he recognized the familiar feeling of the hunting rope on his bare wrists and his elbows. Something similar around his ankles too. The only, big difference being that, his previous encounters that included him being tied were intentional and much, much more pleasant. His grimace in pain shifted into a bitter smile, at the memory of those meetings.  
That was it, anyway - his jaw clenched in anticipation for the hit. Or the cut. Whatever it was on the man that was about to bring scissors to his neck with a void, nearly dubious look on his face.  
Amateur, he thought.

Spy realised he was involuntarily closing his eyes, the moment he felt the cold metal of the blade against his neck, but not with the impulse of a stab. He opened one eye, then the other. Blue eyes stared at the sniper's face, seeing him so focused on cutting the lower edge of his mask with scissors.  
Actually, he didn't even tear apart his balaclava, just the neck of it.

Well, that wasn't nearly as bad. In such a vulnerable position, in his any other mission he'd be gutted already, or at least very much naked and beaten. And his mask - the biggest asset in his missions - didn't feel like it had been touched at all while he was unconscious.  
Something even more unusual, the spy noticed, was that the marksman looked slightly uncomfortable in cutting the fabric covering his face, as if he had some problem touching his skin. Hesitant fingertips ran slightly up under his mask, along his neck, brushing against his Adam's apple. A small shiver ran through the sitting man: cold hands. He couldn't have expected otherwise.

《Well, you're a man. Just wanted to make sure.》  
The sniper sounded like he was justifying himself for his gesture. He could have, of course, simply pulled up the balaclava and reveal his face: something told him not to. As a mindless choice, he chose not to reveal of the person in front of him, more than what really mattered; they were both professionals doing their jobs, and he could respect that. Besides, if he wanted to he'd be able to unmask the man any time he wanted - it's not like he was going to run away in that conditions.  
He sat on the kitchen table, arms crossed on his chest, staring at the spy in front of him. A moment of stationary silence.

《I get that you don't want to blow your cover, but I need to know if you can understand me.》

His eyes pierced the blue ones, unresponsive and yet alert to his words, that for once seemed to frown his thin eyebrows. A single nod from the spy.  
Well, that was great. Mostly because, if the man didn't know Finnish, he could only rely on few sentences in Swedish. Up from there, it would just have been hand gestures.

《I'm no doctor, but I know a thing or two on wounds in this weather. And if you're not screaming in pain right now, might be because you already lost sensitivity there.》

He scratched his cheek, thoughtful. The same uncomfortable look on his face resurfaced from before.  
《I have to bandage the wounds, unless you want to start bleeding out the moment your legs unfreeze. And I need you conscious and responsive for this, so try not to pass out again.》

As if he had been muttering to himself rather than to the other, sniper kneeled down on one knee in front of him. He unsheathed the hunting knife strapped to his own thigh: an old present from his father, rather than a service weapon. From the moment he left home, he had never used it on animals as it was originally intended to.  
The sniper took a deep breath, shifting his gaze from the sharp blade to the torn flesh of the legs of the other man. He felt the anxiety growing, more than the nausea coming from the smell of it, and standing up again he turned his back to the spy, catching the pair of scissors together with his knife, and turned on the burner. He passed over the weak flame both the blades of the two tools, while the hand not busy with holding the tool massaged the bridge of his nose.  
He was tired. Tired of the whole situation, of having another person - besides, one he didn't know - in his hut, so arrogantly and suddenly entering his life. Once again, the thought of just killing him surfaced. He turned to take another look at the stranger.  
Spy just frowned a little, eyebrows half hidden behind his black balaclava. The Finnish thought that he would have probably been less suspicious if he hadn't worn such a kind of mask, one that everyone would immediately associate with some kind of black operation. Who knows, maybe it actually was, and he was involuntarily helping a member of the opposition, or a German. Maybe even a Russian - difficult to determine, without a face and a voice.  
A small, bitter smile as he went back in front of the other, reassuring himself mentally that he had surely been making the matter more complicated than what really was.  
It's nothing difficult - to disinfect, cut if there's anything to cut maybe, bandage and seal it all with some dressing. No need for a doctor's degree - field doctors were roughly theoretically prepared as he was in that moment (that is, not at all) and they still saved lives. Somehow.

《You don't really keep good company, you know that right?  
You've got bad luck. I'm not the chatty type either.》

The spy thought he indeed had bad luck, in this story - not really for this reason, though.

《...fuck, I'm not a doctor.》 he muttered to himself, starting to cut the other's thick and tight-fitting trousers above the flesh that his own shots had torn.  
Now he knew why he always blocked the idea of thinking of what happens at the other end of the bullet, in the distance: from up close, the smell and sight of it alone were sickening.  
He remembered doing the same for his brothers in arms - as he did back then, he simply blocked out all thoughts and operated at the top of his concentration, in complete silence.

He stopped only when he finally heard the voice of the other, clearing his throat after having emitted only soft groans of pain, the moments in which the fingers dived a little too deep in his flesh in search for some bullet shards.

《...You need to stop the blood flow first. If you have a belt, use it. I'll bleed to death if you continue to rummage through my flesh like that.》

He stopped, taking a moment to look at the other in the open face - where the balaclava allowed to, at least - of the wounded man. His voice: stunning. As someone clearly not native from the country, he spoke a flawless Finnish, even if very flat and without any sort of regional accent. It sounded polished, academic.  
The sniper cracked a smile before going back to what he has been instructed to do: he pulled off his own belt, fastening it to the thigh he was working on, as it had been a tourniquet.

《Now you can remove the bone and bullet shards, if you see them from the outside.》

And so he did. The sniper found quite reassuring being guided by someone that looked more familiar on the subject of medicine than he did himself.  
He went on following the other's directions, stopping only when he felt the other man tremble, the skin of his legs even paler than the when they were frostbitten. He couldn't say exactly what was going on with the spy, but these weren't good signs.

《Wait.》

Spy simply couldn't afford to faint now: he was the leading doctor of that improvised duo of terrible surgeons. It was best for the sniper - for both of them, actually - to keep him conscious. That involved, clearly, supplying a quantity of alcohol that had to be enough to numb his pain but not that much to get him drunk.  
Luckily for them both, the sniper was a master of using just the right quantity of vodka to keep warm during shifts. Also, he owned a supply of vodka that could fuel a small squadron for a year.

So they toasted, they drinked with the silent toast to both men's health, as per tradition, sparing a thought especially for the one who was mid-surgery.

With a fair amount of embarrassment, in all of this, he had to still keep the other bound behind his back by his elbows and wrists: security measures taken to prevent the possible reaction of the foreigner to having a pair of scissors, an hunting knife and what probably is an enemy there, all at a stabbing range.  
The other side of the coin was, he had to bring to his mouth the glass, the cigarette.  
A snarky comment popped into the mind of the sniper, regarding how much of a babysitter he was being for the guy: he basically spoon-fed him.  
Another mental comment followed, regarding this time how his icy eyes made him feel as they trailed between his gestures and his face. Obviously, neither were said out loud.

《Do you smoke?》

Spy nodded.  
As a reply, the sniper put the bottom of his lit cigarette on the thin lips of the foreigner, allowing him to take a couple of drags. When the Finnish took back his cig, he tried not to notice the tinge of blood left by the wounded man.  
And so they managed to finish a full cigarette in complete silence. As the second had been lit, the spy watched the other draw near him, from the other end of the table, a small machine of uncertain use, something that could either be an old radio or a radar sounder. The only aspect he could determine in all certainty was that whatever it was, it hadn't been used in quite a few time. The other looked indeed clumsy in using it. He watched as the man composed a number, swore under his breath in completing the previous task, and drew the receiver to his ear.  
He couldn't hold back a snicker in seeing him so unfamiliar with a phone, obsolete as it may be.  
Even then, he listened carefully as the other murmured some sentences into his receiver: maybe a combination of numbers, probably a time, a couple of words he didn't know, but sounded like an approval. The host didn't clearly want for the other to understand his conversation, so it would have been of little use to ask him directly about it. Still, it was impressive to think how anyone could have even understood what he said - more mumbling than words, actually. Probably that was the way of speaking of that region. With him, at least, he had been speaking way more clearly.

Not to let the other think he'd been puzzling over the overheard conversation, he decided to change the subject.  
《What should I call you?》  
《Matti.》 the sniper replied absent-mindedly: no need to lie on his own name, considering the fact that he was about to let a stranger, probably a skilled killer, sleep into his home. It doesn't really get more dangerous than that, giving his true name.  
《Hm-mm.》

《Here is some tuna.》  
《I don't like tuna》  
《Die, then.》

Spy snickered softly. Well, that really was a first: the Finnish lifted his gaze on the other's face, an amused smile. 

Matti finished quickly his canned tuna, and checked his wristwatch: in a few hours, he'd be up again for shift. Neither the alcohol, nor the thrill of that new involuntary hostage were enough to wipe out his increasing sleepiness. He should call it a night, and just go to sleep.  
He stepped closer to the bound man, carefully untying his elbows and wrists.

《I called our doctor. Tomorrow evening, after the end of my shift, he will come to visit you. So, it's best for you if you don't run away and you don't try to kill me in my sleep.》

《Running away might be quite difficult, at the moment.》 The sniper snorted, amused. Maybe it was an effect of the blood loss, but the foreigner was starting to sound funnier by the minute. He turned off all lights, leaving only the firepit alight, sitting on his bed. 

《Last thing: if you need to pee - use the bottle. Goodnight.》

That last suggestion was naturally welcomed with a disgusted face.


End file.
